A picture says a thousand words.
Take a clear picture of your wiring job, and then we can help you troubleshoot.
!
Unfortunately itâs kind of a rats nest. I couldnât find a way to splice in an extra harness without it turning into a cluster. Can I draw you a wiring diagram of what Iâm trying to do instead? I have done further troubleshooting I believe I have miswired something as all is good until I connect the button pins to the Brooks itc board.
Good work, Multimeterâs are my go to.
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No clue, I never mod that stick body
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Seimitsu SS plate holes do not line up with those on a Sanwa plate. If youâre using a SS plate to provide a better shaft length you might have to go with an extender and a kowal plate or maybe a flat seimitsu plate. You could also opt for the longer shaft levers. Otherwise a shaft extension isnât out of the question but it will affect throw, so keep that in mind.
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The Seimitsu SS plate is intended to fit mounts that arenât flush with the top panel and get the same most hight possible.
8bitdo Arcade Stick Modding for Dummies
I am not the best at making guides, so please feel free to make any suggestions or edits.
OK lets get down to it. What you will NEED:
- New buttons
- New joystick
- 5 Pin Wiring Harness OR 4 pieces of .187 harness OR cut/splice the original joystick 2pin cables
- Cable strippers
- A way to splice cables, either:
- Solder and heat shrink tubing
- Crimping
- Lever nuts
- Terminal blocks
- Twisting and electric tape⌠please donât do it⌠but⌠it will work.
All briefly explained at the bottom of the post.
Lets go over the easy part first: buttons. Simple but can be very annoying. Lets take a look:
This is what we are going to deal with. Two little tabs on the button switch and the quick-disconnect plugs.
The connectors will most likely be flush against the switches of the 8bitdo standard buttons.
What you need to do first, pull on the quick disconnect until you get a little gap wide enough for a screwdriver.
If you can not pull it out at all, then tilt it to the side, all we need is a little space to get our screwdriver in. Pliers are great.
Once we get our screwdriver in, we need to twist it to the left or right to push the quick disconnect down and off. This has been the easiest way for me to get these quick disconnects out.
Other methods are to squeeze the little tab that is holding it in and pull out at the same time or to use pliers and grab the skinny metal part (no wires) and pull hard. Use which ever method is easiest for you. Once both are out, take the new button and connect both wires, any terminal. Just do this one button at a time and youâll be done in no time.
OK lets move on to the joystick.
This is the most important piece of info you will need. Look at the joystick and the buttons. This is basically a top-down view of your 8bitdo internals. If your joystickâs 5pin is sticking to the right, then the top left picture is what you would follow. Depending on Sanwa vs Seimitsu.
Letâs take Sanwa for example. In that specific orientation - buttons to the left, joystick on the right with the 5pin on the right as well - the orange cable will be up, red will be down, yellow will be left while green will be right. Black will be your ground. (pink in picture because black wouldnât show up)
So what now?
Start to undo the 4 screws holding in the original joystick and take the joystick out.
(picture is my Sanwa stick, but this is just showing the 4 holes)
You will notice the 8 wires will lead to four 2pin adapters. (standard 2 pin has two white cables instead of white/blue) Unplug all four 2pin adapters from the PCB. Notice how each one is labeled on the PCB RT, LF, DN, UP.
We are going to either use 4 pieces of .187 harness or cut the original 8 wires since they are soldered on to the joystick switches directly. Either way, we need four 2pin cables with nothing on the other end. Strip all 8 of the empty ends.
Now take a look again where these four 2pin cables will connect. The area circled in red is where the ground wires will go. So take a look at your four 2pin cables. Line them up with the plug on the board. Make sure to note which side will be ground - the plugs only go in one way. Now take all four ground wires and splice them with the black wire from the 5pin harness.
Once this is done, you just need to match up the colors we went over a few minutes ago with the four remaining wires. Check out the picture above again, everything is already labeled! RT, LF, DN, UP. So just match the colors of the 5pin to each of these and you are literally ALL DONE!
Quick disconnect instead of 5pin
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If you want to use a joystick with 8 terminals, like the original joystick, then you have two choices. 4 pieces of .187 harness OR cut the original joystick 2pin cables and solder them onto the new stick.
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Grounding is fine as long as all four are the same. If you chose the silver looking terminals, make all silvers ground and copper live/color. If you chose the copper looking terminals, make all coppers ground and silver live/color.
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In terms of directions, itâs reversed. If youâre looking at the 8bitdo internals with stick on right and buttons on left, then Top Right will be Right, Top Left will be Down, Bottom Left will be Left and Bottom Right will be Up.
Splicing methods
- Solder and heat shrink tubing
Heat shrink tubing needs to be inserted before twisting together and then slid back on after solder. This picture is a bad example actually, the heat shrink is far too close to the solder point, resulting in already shrinking heat tube. Try to place your heat shrink tubing further down and once you are done soldering, then slide the tubing back up and heat to shrink over exposed wire/solder. (heat shrink tubing is insulation)
Strip wires, twist together and then apply solder. Wait a few seconds and then tug apart to make sure there is a solid connection. - Crimping
Strip a longer section and fold it up to fit your crimping connector.
Visualize/memorize where the cable will go and where you will clamp.
Put the connector in the half circle of the crimping tool and lightly apply pressure to keep connector in place with one hand ready to squeeze hard.
Remember the visualization/memorization and insert the wire then squeeze very hard.
Hold it by the connector tip and tug the wire to ensure a solid connection. If you failed, try flipping it and crimping the other side, depending on the type of tool you are using. If you fail again, itâs usually time to cut losses and start over with a new crimping connector.
Lever nuts
Strip wire, insert and close down lever.
Terminal blocks
Strip wire, insert and screw down. Cut down to length.
SEIMITSU LS32 SS plate
Does NOT work in the 8bitdo without dremel and shaving away plastic inside 8bitdo casing. Plus there will be no proper way of mounting all 4 screws. Only 2 screws, but not in the way you would think - only on the same side⌠which will NOT secure the joystick enough imo.
Here are some pictures
Last picture is to show how much of a gap there actually is, the plastic indentation tabs have to be shaved away, even if you had four actual areas to mount this.
If shaft length concerns you, then Iâd suggest going with extended shaft and stronger springs to combat the extra throw added by extended shafts. My current flavor is the JLF w/ extended shaft and 4lb spring, but Iâm more of a shmups guy.
A big thanks to everyone here as there is no way I could have done this on my own.
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This thread was extremely useful for me and I wanted to contribute how my mod went. I noticed the connections inside the N30 Arcade were JST-XH so I bought some connectors and a crimp tool from Amazon:
The crimp tool was quite expensive and I donât feel I have much further use for it so will hopefully sell it on.
Never crimped before but a couple of experiments got my confidence up and I went for it. I can confirm that the ground terminals on the PCB are all common so youâd only need to connect the ground from the Sanwa joystick to one of them and just not bother with the others. I did bother and created a little daisy chain. My thinking was I may wish to connect one at a time if trying to find an issue, though I didnât suffer an issue. Was pretty happy with the cable I created:
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And here it is connected in the N30 Arcade:
And my finished, improved N30 Arcade stick. I use it with a Retropie DIY mini SNES, hence the colour choices.
Sorry, multiple replies as Iâm only permitted one image per post.
Total pro-choice!~ Very well done! I see you setting up for that SNES HFS layout, did you swap the signals as well or is it just for looks?
As I use it with a Retropie itâs easy to remap the buttons in the software, so I didnât remap the hardware.
Iâve actually adjusted things to the layout Mame 2003+ expects now which is pretty much how the N30 is as stock, so itâs a little different.
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hi, so im really new to this, you said " I can confirm that the ground terminals on the PCB are all common so youâd only need to connect the ground from the Sanwa joystick to one of them and just not bother with the others." does that mean I would only need to connect the black wire to one other wire or would I need to do what you did and connect it to all of them?
Edit : Do I still make the daisy chain?
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Thanks for making this thread; Iâve never modded a stick this way before (just push buttons which any organism with opposable thumbs can do) and this gave me the confidence to give it a shot. Iâm going to take the ritzy route and install a silent JLF-TPRG and see how it goes⌠Iâve always wanted a silenced stick!
Parts are on order from FA; will post finished result at some point when/if itâs doneâŚ
UPDATE: Successfully modded a Sanwa JLF-TPRG-8BYT-SK higher tension silent stick using the 5 pin wiring harness. Thanks for the very helpful post @jeffyt !!!
Also, a big thanks to @Darksakul for the splicing suggestions - I ended up using some knockoff Scotchlok connectors:
and a 4 position barrier strip for the ground, which you can gorilla glue to the wall:
both per his advice above. Can confirm these two items in tandem work great and require zero soldering for a stick using the 5 pin connector. No exposed connections, nothing.
Just need some cheap slip join pliers, a screwdriver and a wirestripper. And some tie wraps to pretty it up.
Those scotchlok connectors are amazing, Iâll be using those whenever I need to splice from now on!
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Hi all - I created an account just to say âthanksâ to the group and add my 2 cents on how I managed to get it all working without soldering a single wire. Honestly, based on @jeffyt 's amazing detailed photos guide (it did help man, thank you!) and @Darksakul 's comment about how you could use terminal strips instead (much appreciated!), it all came together.
I upgrade my 8 buttons to Sanwa OBSF-30, and my joystick to the Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT-SK.
Tools needed:
- Screwdriver
- 2 x Terminal strips (dual row, 4 position - 600V 25A) [link]
- 5 x Wire cables for buttons (size 4.8mm) [link] *note: I got them from the pack in the link above, and didnât touch anything but the 5 wires I needed --if you can find the wires on their own, even better
I got the wires because I didnât want to remove them from my existing joystick because, who knows. If the operation didnât work, Iâd be out 2 joysticks right?
Buttons are easy, and explained above. So just for the joystick:
- I unscrewed, and unplugged the old joystick (all 4 connectors; UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT)
- I took 4 of the wires from the package I bought above, and just stripped the connector end, so I now have 1 end that fits the board just fine --and 2 dangling wires (1 white and 1 blue) --I stripped it with regular pliers, and a YouTube clip on how to do it without an official wire stripper
- I connected the freshly stripped WHITE ones each to their own screwed section on the terminal box (ex.: 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a)
- I connect 4 of the corresponding 5-pin connector wires (all except the black/ground one) to their corresponding sections on the terminal strip (1b, 2b, 3b, 4b) using the guide from @jeffyt (life saver!) to know which color will go to which
- I connected 5th and final wire from the 5-pin connector wires (came with Sanwa joystick) to one end of the 2nd terminal strip (call it 1c)
- I connected all the 4 BLUE wires to 1 single slot in that 2nd terminal strip opposite the black/ground wire
- I plugged the ends of all the cables where they needed to go (Sanwa joystick + board)
- I put double-sided tape for the terminal strips to stick in place
- Turned it on, tested, and âŚperfection!
Thank you all to this board. There are literally 5 different ways you can mod this thing based on your skill level. The one I just described is literally just a screwdriver and some concept of stripping a wire (takes about 30seconds to learn and apply).
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Finished modding mine with sanwa buttons, joystick, and replace the joystick spring with 2 lbs spring to get more tension so the joystick would spring back to neutral faster.
I had to learn how to solder wires just to connect the joystickâŚ
Iâm still waiting for my shipment of Kowal oversize actuator for sanwa JLF to arrive.
edit 18 March 20
Installed kowal oversized nylon actuator and experimenting with chinese knockoff gate insert (semi-round gate)
